


Halloween on Christmas

by Riona, th_esaurus



Category: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
Genre: Age Difference, F/M, Gwen is nineteen, ill-advised makeouts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-22 10:27:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17058086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Riona/pseuds/Riona, https://archiveofourown.org/users/th_esaurus/pseuds/th_esaurus
Summary: "We were friends. I didn't love you on the condition that you had to be a total success at everything you did. I just loved you."There’s a strange silence."Him," she says. "You? I don't know how to talk about it."





	Halloween on Christmas

**Author's Note:**

> A note on Gwen's age in this fic: after seeing _Into the Spider-Verse_ , the two of us were cheerfully discussing bad-idea Gwen/Peter B Parker makeouts, and then we learnt what 'middle school' means (we're not American) and went 'oh, holy crap, we weren't thinking _that_ bad an idea.'
> 
> She's nineteen in her comics and the film aged her down, so consider her aged back up here!

Peter doesn’t exactly have a home in this universe, and he knows Gwen didn’t drag a bed with her through the hole in her universe; she didn’t exactly turn Aunt May down when she was offered a place to sleep. So he and Gwen are staying the night at Aunt May’s house, in the bedroom that used to be Peter’s. His dead self’s room at his dead aunt’s house.

She’s put up all his old certificates and trophies in this ’verse, too. Mathletics, debate team, that letter he once got from the Mayor when he was eleven, patronising him about his thoughts on hydrogen mitosis cleaning up the city’s air. 

Most of them were in Mary Jane’s attic, now, stored up after May died. MJ had kept their house, in the divorce. May’s was unceremoniously sold.

Gwen’s on the bed, Peter in a sleeping bag on the floor. His back won’t thank him in the morning, but it’s probably better than the alternative. Sleeping on the bed might be a little too much warped familiarity. There’s a part of him afraid he’ll wake up thinking he’s a kid again, and then everything that’s happened since then will hit him like a truck to the face. Uncle Ben, Aunt May, Mary Jane.

Gwen.

God, it’s so weird to see her again. She’s so young. Were they ever really that young? It’s like the Gwen in his mind grew up alongside him, and now here’s this girl to remind him that, nope, she never got much past this age.

“This is weird,” Gwen says, quietly, from the bed. “Is it weird for you? It’s weird for me.”

“The room?” Has she been here before? He wasn’t thinking about it until just now, but there were times when he and Gwen—

In this room, on that bed—

She said Peter Parker was her best friend, right? Maybe she just paid him – normal, friendly visits here.

There’s a rustling from the bed, and her face appears over the side, looking down at him, her hands folded under her chin. “Yeah,” she says. “Just... here I am. In my friend’s room. With him.” She pauses. “And he’s dead.”

“If it’s any consolation,” Peter says, “if he’d lived long enough, he’d probably have just turned into me. No one wants that.”

“Hey,” Gwen says. “No. _Screw_ that. He could have turned into the biggest loser on the planet, and he’d still be my friend, and I’d still be glad he was around. I wouldn’t care if he just sat around eating pizza all day, I wouldn’t care if he got divorced – I mean, I’d _care_ , I’d want him to be happy. But we were friends. I didn’t love you _on the condition_ that you had to be a total success at everything you did. I just loved you.”

There’s a strange silence.

“Him,” she says. “You? I don’t know how to talk about it.”

“Sorry,” he says, quickly. He has to say something; he can’t let them fall into that quietness again.

She raises her eyebrows at him. “Sorry?”

“You know,” Peter says. “I mean, I’ve been walking around with your friend’s face this whole time, like an asshole.”

Of course, Gwen has a face that he knows too well himself. He’s been trying not to bring it up. She’s way too young to have to deal with dead selves in alternate universes.

Too young to deal with dead friends, too. And Miles is definitely too young for any of the crap he’s going through. Maybe none of them get to be kids.

“You can keep your face,” Gwen says, after a pause. Like she’s actually been considering it.

“Well, that’s good.” He’s not really in any doubt that she’d be capable of removing it.

“Can you...” She jerks her head up slightly.

He has no idea what she’s asking.

She does it again.

It doesn’t help. Peter frowns at her.

“I’m asking you to sit up!” she snaps. Not _loud_ , but definitely frustrated. “So I can get a proper look at you!”

“Well, not if you’re going to ask like that.”

“Oh, wow, I thought _I_ was supposed to be the teenager.”

“You couldn’t have said it in the first place?” he asks. “ _Sit up_ is literally two words.”

He’s kind of grateful for the stupid argument; at least it’s a distraction from all the ghosts in this room, at least two of which are his. Maybe that’s why he sits up without really thinking about what _get a proper look at you_ might mean.

And then his spider-sense _screams_ at him, and – what—

He grabs Gwen’s wrist by reflex before she touches his face.

They’re both very still for a moment.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” she says.

“You look with your hands?”

“Please,” she says. “I miss him.”

He doesn’t know exactly what she’s asking for. But his heart is hammering, and he knows that, wherever this road leads, it’s not a good one.

“I’m not him,” he says. _You’re not her. This isn’t a chance to meet each other again, this isn’t a chance to fix anything._

But he lets go of her wrist as he says it, because his head knows what he should be doing here but his hands are fucking idiots.

It's not exactly chaste, the way she kisses him. She doesn’t stick her tongue down his throat or anything, jeez, it’s just she seems – skeptical. Can people kiss skeptically?

Very, very gently, as though he’s closing a door late at night and doesn’t want to wake anyone, Peter pushes Gwen away from him with the tips of his fingers. 

“Uhm,” he says, his throat dry.

Gwen rolls her eyes. It seems like a tic, like an evasive tactic so she doesn’t have to look him in the eye; but also, she seems pissed. “Right,” she sighs. “Shouldn’t have done that.”

She’s leaning over the mattress at an uncomfortable angle, and he’s sitting up with his legs tangled in the sleeping bag, too hot in his sweatpants, and, he realises abruptly, he isn’t wearing a shirt. He only had the pants and his suit. Gwen’s wearing his old 2007 Midtown High Science Fair tee, not as lanky on her as it had been on him back then. The insignia’s the same, but the bad pun is different in this universe: _nuclear physics is the bomb!_ it says across her chest. 

He’s staring at her chest.

“Hey,” she says sharply, and he jerks his gaze up, and she kisses him again.

Fuck.

This time, it’s a little more – _more_. Her mouth just slightly open against his, her breath damp, her palms on his jaw, pulling him in. It’s been twenty years since he kissed Gwen, and at least four years since he kissed _anyone_ , and it’s almost instinctive to kiss back, to lean into her, perching up on his knees, hands on the edge of the mattress. 

There’s a tingling feeling in his bottom lip and his belly. 

He’s—

Technically he’s made out with Gwen Stacy before, so it’s not like this is—

Unprecedented or anything—

“Wait, wait,” he pants, pulling back for real this time. “Wait, just – this is a bad idea.”

“A terrible idea,” she agrees. 

“When you said Peter was your best friend—” he starts, and Gwen huffs, a tantrum in miniature, and flops back onto the bed, staring at the ceiling. That stupid tee rides up her tummy a little way and she doesn’t bother to pull it down.

“I meant he was my best friend,” she says, something of a sulk in her voice. “We – I mean, sure, we fooled around a couple of times. Didn’t _you?_ ”

“Me and you? I mean, fuck, me and Gwen? We—” He coughs, uncomfortable. “We dated a while.”

“Well, me and Peter didn’t get the chance,” she says, as airily as she can. She lets that hang like the sword of Damocles above them both for a while. And then she turns, shifting her hips and her shoulders until they’re face to face again. She’s frowning. She smiles a lot at Miles, Peter thinks, and not much at anyone else. She looks familiar when she smiles, like a faded photograph. 

“Are we still friends, in your universe?” she asks, like the thought’s only just occurred to her but the answer is vitally important.

“I—” Peter says.

He doesn’t say: _I killed you when I broke your spine in four places._

Instead he says, aiming for nonchalance, “You died. A long time ago.”

The faintest shudder passes over her, almost like a sudden wave of goosebumps down her arms. She doesn’t seem shocked, though. She just nods, slowly.

“I had like twenty years to get over it,” Peter rambles, like he’s talking about a toy he lost as a kid. “So. It’s not even that weird. Seeing you again.”

“Not exactly a fresh wound,” she says. 

“Right,” Peter agrees, except that it comes out sort of like a choking noise instead of a word. 

She’s lying on her right, her undercut hidden by the pillow and her hair slipping across her neck and cheek. It’s shorter than it ever was in his universe, but the same colour, those same dark roots she always said she was too lazy to bleach out. When he lets himself look at her, really look at her, he can’t tell if the flecks of navy in her blue eyes are new, unique to _this_ Gwen, or if he just can’t remember the devil in her details. 

“I want to kiss you again,” Gwen says stoically. “Can I?”

“Probably not?”

“That’s not an answer.”

“Yeah, I’ve never been good at side-taking. I like being on the fence. It’s comfortable on the fence.”

“Come up here,” she says, not even a quiver in her voice, shifting back so there’s room in the bed.

“I’m definitely going to regret it tomorrow if I do that,” Peter says, swallowing thickly.

“Probably not even tomorrow,” Gwen says pragmatically. “Instantly, more like.”

“Right,” Peter says, feeling utterly stupid. There’s an awful sort of pause, where he waits for her to bore of the idea and roll over, her back to him again, but Gwen Stacy was always a little bit bull-headed. 

“ _Fuck_ ,” Peter hisses under his breath. Then he kicks the sleeping bag off his clammy feet, pulls his sweatpants up as high as he can over his hips, and clambers up onto the space she’s made for him on the mattress. 

Immediately her hands go to his paunch. Both palms, a curious little squeeze.

“ _Hey_ ,” Peter whines.

“I had to,” she shrugs, but she’s finally smiling. “I missed you.”

 _You_. Not _him_. It cuts like a knife through Peter’s mounting sense of unreality.

“Don’t do this to yourself,” he says. “I’m not him. You convince yourself I’m him, it’ll just be worse when we go back to our own universes or glitch ourselves to death.”

She closes her eyes for a moment and groans. “You’re really not going to let me pretend for a _moment?_ ”

He’s already killed Gwen Stacy. Is he really going to meet another version of her, one who’s still alive, and immediately fuck her up? Does this end with him just rampaging through the multiverse, destroying Gwen Stacys, one way or another?

“I can be your friend,” he says. “I just can’t be _that_ friend. I can be your new friend, Peter Benjamin Parker, who kind of reminds you of your old friend, Peter Parker, but is a _completely different guy_.”

He notices that Gwen has not tried to close the gap between their bodies. Their toes, though, are sort of touching. Touching, but absent-mindedly, not purposefully. That’s fine. Toes aren’t sexy.

She puts her hand on his hip, like an awkward prom-date. “I don’t do friends anymore.”

“Exactly! Exactly. So you can’t do me.”

“Trying to kill the mood with dad jokes?”

“Absolutely n— there’s no _mood_ , okay?”

Gwen frowns, a deep, genuine thing, and her fingers curl a little against his hip-bone. “Just close your eyes, okay? Think of MJ.”

It’s a low blow, far below the belt, and Peter’s hurt before he can register it. He gets a split-second warning alarm, his spider-sense ringing just behind his temple that something’s in his personal space, neither friend nor foe, and then Gwen puts her lips on his again, puts her chest against his. Her hands are in his hair; her hands are forceful, in his hair, and he was always weak for that. 

Even with his eyes closed it’s nothing like kissing MJ; it’s been a long time but he had that shit memorised, the way she always smiled just before their lips touched, the way he always tried to touch her freckled cheeks as if they were Braille. Gwen’s jaw is softer, and she’s tentative. This is curious exploration; Peter knows he’s being experimented on but the word _used_ feels way too harsh, and besides, he’s used to feeling like a guinea pig.

He hisses when he feels her tongue against his, but the noise doesn’t turn into the protestation it’s meant to. He grabs her waist – a dancer’s hips, absolutely no lower – and lets her kiss him, and tries to tell himself that’s all this is. A one-sided claim staked on opportunities lost, and not, like, two spider-people from alternate dimensions making out. She’s not great at kissing. Inexperienced, he guesses, with a sinking feeling.

Nonetheless, he’s—

He’s getting hard. 

Oh god. He’s getting hard from kissing another human being, and not just jerking off, perfunctory, in his grotty shower.

How loose are his sweatpants? Can she tell? She’s not exactly spooned up against him, not quite, but her leg has slipped between his thighs and is somewhere in the general vicinity of his dick. If she slid it up a little further it’s be a nice, solid pressure exactly where he doesn’t need it—

Gwen opens her mouth up to him, possessive, and then she stutters. Stops. 

Her thigh is—

Yeah, it’s nudged up against his dick.

“This,” Peter starts, then has no idea how to follow that up. Isn’t what it feels like? Sure it is. _Is that a spare web-slinger in your pocket or are you just—_

“No, it’s okay,” Gwen murmurs. She presses a soft, chaste kiss on his lips, and her mouth is damp. Closed-off. Her hands are still cupping his jaw, but it feel less possessive now, and more like a safety net. “I think I’m out.”

“Sorry,” Peter says miserably.

“I’m kinda flattered,” Gwen admits. She flashes a small grin. “I just don’t—”

“No, I mean, I’m like, _super_ old, from your perspective.”

She shakes her head, and her voice is firm. “You’re not him.”

That strange silence settles over them again. Not entirely uncomfortable, but it has a weight to it.

He’d feel a lot better about this whole thing if he’d been the one to shut it down. He should have been the one to shut it down. He wasn’t the one who started it – he can cling to that, at least – but he should have been the one to shut it down.

It doesn’t exactly feel like an _I-told-you-so_ moment.

“I should probably—” He tries to climb off the edge of the bed, so he can crawl back into the safety of his sleeping bag and try very hard not to think about what just happened, but she catches his arm.

Is she just going to be changing her mind all night, back and forth? He’s not sure he’ll survive it.

“Sleep here anyway,” she says. “Just sleeping, that’s fine.”

 _Is_ it fine? “I don’t—”

“You don’t think it’s a good idea,” Gwen says. “I’m not asking if you think it’s a good idea. I’m just asking if you’re staying.”

He can’t fall asleep next to Gwen Stacy. That means he’ll _wake up_ next to Gwen Stacy, in his bed at his aunt’s house, and he will _absolutely_ think for a moment that all those losses were just a dream, and the realisation is going to wreck him.

But that moment before it destroys him, the moment where everything’s fine again, just for a second, he kind of wants that.

He lies back down. He’s trying to keep a reasonable distance between them, but Gwen pays absolutely no attention to his efforts; she curls up against his side, closes her eyes.

Maybe he doesn’t need to worry about the morning. He’s not sure he’s going to sleep at all.


End file.
